


Never Blessed

by Cautiously_Delightful



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Family, Fluff, The Fisher Commune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23617900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cautiously_Delightful/pseuds/Cautiously_Delightful
Summary: Jack had never doubted Miss Fisher’s generosity.or, Detective Inspector Robinson ends up with a family, in the bargain.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 34
Kudos: 169





	Never Blessed

Jack had never doubted Miss Fisher’s generosity, not once since the moment she reached out to poor Miss Williams, standing shivering with terror in her maid’s uniform, and offered up not just a calling card and a position, but an escape to a new life. 

As they had grown, well…closer, he had seen her open her heart and her home to all manners and all kinds. She teased Mr. Butler for his ability to sweep in at just the right moment with the exact right necessity – a drink, a scone, a high caliber weapon – but who was she to call the kettle black? Didn’t she somehow, so uncannily, perceive what the person in front of her really needed – encouragement, unexpected advice, loving censure – and find some way to provide it, often without the express knowledge of her beneficiaries? It was so surprising for someone so loud and bold, but often the most important gifts she gave were subtle and arrived slowly, over time, with dawning realization for the recipients. Look at how she had encouraged and mentored young Dorothy and bumbling Hugh – protecting their hearts, avoiding their resistance, respecting the ways in which they were different from herself, but also nudging, cajoling, and counseling them through their discovery of each other and, more importantly, of themselves. Then again, from who else but Phryne Fisher would a gift of the _Kama Sutra_ seem a restrained and downright understated intervention? A charming freight train indeed. 

But it was one thing to witness her wield this power around others and quite another to feel it bent on himself. So much for being the observant police detective. He was so wrapped up, so grateful, so embarrassingly overwhelmed by all the gifts Phryne had so obviously and openly given him – her assistance with cases, her levity and joie de vivre, her company day and night – that he had failed to notice her longer game.

After the dissolution of his first marriage – and when, he wondered, in his acquaintance and growing love and then desire for a life of any kind with Phryne had he stopped thinking “marriage” and started thinking “first marriage” – he had relinquished his conjugal home along with the hope that Rosie would ever be returning to it. And he had done so with very little regret. It was not only a place of ghosts and unwelcome reminiscences, but had already been the home of many solitary lives: Rosie’s during his absences, first from the War and then from his job and the War’s lingering effects, and his own after her departure to her sister’s. He had been glad to abandon its overwhelming memories and overwhelming décor for the simplicity and bareness of his rented bachelor rooms. Books, he took, along with his clothes and a few household necessities, but little else. When he had caught Collins sleeping at the station, he had had to stifle a wildly inappropriate wry comment about how his own lodgings were remarkably similar to the ascetic cells. But what did it matter, when all his time was spent at the station or, increasingly, in Miss Fisher’s parlor and at Miss Fisher’s table? A great deal, it would seem – his initial relief in the calm and solitary rooms turned to a quiet resignation regarding their lack of comforts, material and social. How stark the contrast after sitting with Phryne on her soft and enveloping sofa and with her full attention, itself just as soft and enveloping.

And then he had received the only gift in his life that mattered and the one he had never hoped to deserve – Miss Fisher’s heart, her love, her company, her acceptance of him into her life and adventures and bed. And after that, why return to those increasingly dusty and undisturbed rooms, now so obviously a placeholder, a location for vigil while he waited for the woman who was really his home, no matter where they were.

“Jack, dear,” she had started the conversation one velvety evening after the house had quieted and they had toasted to a thoroughly solved case, “doesn’t it seem to you just ever so slightly redundant to spend all your time in my boudoir – much to my satisfaction I assure you – but to use that well-earned inspector’s salary for rooms which, by my calculations, have seen no occupancy for quite some time?”

And that was that. Jack had expected to open his mouth with a short and starched refusal about the propriety, about her reputation, about his, about the example for her various charges – but all that came out was a simple “Thank you, Phryne, yes.” And after all that, what else could she give him? 

He had known it was likely to be odd at first, but what else in their lives at this point wasn’t? One simply couldn’t be dragged along on so many of Miss Fisher’s adventures and not become accustomed to the discomfort, the embarrassment, the awkwardness to which _she_ seemed so impervious but that she strewed in her wake for those around her. A small price to pay for the fun, the excitement, and the love she offered so freely. He had already mentally walked through the first time of running into Miss Williams in the early hours, the mortification of Mr. Butler cleaning up after himself as well as Miss Fisher, and the disruption of the constant stream of misfits and miscreants that Phryne seemed inevitably to collect to herself. He was more than prepared to buck up under it all to be near her, to not have to leave her even to retrieve a copy of Shakespeare from his lodgings after Hugh had absconded with yet another of his books at the station. 

But then, Jane had needed a bit of help with her Latin homework and Phryne had announced herself perfectly incapable of any material assistance, so Jack found himself at the dining room table with notes full of conjugations spread out in front of him and one very excited young girl informing him about the importance of the ancient world for our own. How this had turned into Janey presenting him with her marks on her next language exam, and then all her language exams, and then them tackling Virgil together, he would never really know until he was deep in the thick of _The Aeneid_.

And he wasn’t sure exactly the first time he had overheard Burt and Cec bickering about football, but how could an Abbotsford man not throw in for his team when reputation and strategy and defending one’s suburb’s honour was on the line? And if everyone had all ended up at the next game together, Cec determinedly wearing his West Melbourne colours despite his increasingly outnumbered position in the Fisher household, well that was just the natural progression of a cadre of devoted and riled up footy fans needing to see their teams settle the score on the field.

And one particularly dark night, with Phryne out on the town and Jack happily left home with a book and the quiet, the memories of war had swum up behind his eyes and blurred the words on the page before him. When Mr. Butler had found him in the kitchen, his head bowed and braced in his palm, the older man had quietly brewed them tea and sat in silence until the words had bubbled up in Jack and finally broken through. And there Miss Fisher had found them, hours later, swapping much more entertaining stories of their adventures and comrades and travels, the ghosts not dismissed, but lightened by company and the growing brightness of the dawn outside the kitchen windows.

It had turned into driving Dot – who was only Miss Williams in public now, to him – to pick up her wedding clothes and then, unexpectedly, waiting while she had one last fitting. And since he was there, being asked to offer an opinion and reassure her, quite factually, of the loveliness of her choice and his surety that Hugh would be more than impressed on their special day. Why Miss Fisher hadn’t been able to drive Dot herself in the Hispano hadn’t crossed his mind, he had only gone about the assigned task with a slight quirk of the eyebrow and fond acceptance of the outrageousness of her requests and directives. But it wasn’t until he found himself conversing with alacrity and warmth with Mrs. Stanley that Miss Fisher’s jig was truly up and the realization of her game hit him over the head completely. 

The interfering woman had truly done it, and with such delightful and goodhearted insidiousness that he had found himself in the middle of it before he had even known it had started. All he had hoped for from Miss Fisher, the things he had dreamed to give back to her all that time ago in his silent and cold apartment – partnership, yes; sex, absolutely; love, he could only pray – had been so much to reach for, too much sometimes to even contemplate. All of that would have been more than enough. But of course, when was Miss Fisher one to stop at enough? His books in her library, his hat and coat hanging by the door, his side of their bed, the comforts of a home. And a family – had he not noticed because all he had expected of family life had been so strict? A wife, a home with just him, her, their possible children, and a set of in-laws to visit for Sunday dinner? What he had accepted he would never have – first as the bond between him and Rosie had turned icy and then shattered, and then as his respect had grown for Phryne’s own desires and choices. But what was all that to what she had actually given him, this lively and growing community, their ties forged at first by Miss Fisher’s own radiance, but glowing and true between them all even without her presence. 

It was true that Jack had never doubted Miss Fisher’s generosity, but it was only after she had given him not just herself, but so much beyond just the two of them, that he was able to realize the full extent of that benevolence.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers of ownership abound!
> 
> The title references Jack's response in 'Murder on the Ballarat Train' to Miss Fisher's inquiry about children of his own: "We were never blessed."


End file.
